1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tape leash used for expediting and facilitating the manual application of tape drawn from a roll of tape.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are many commercial and industrial operations in which large quantities of tape must be applied either as a preparation for a subsequent operation or as a fabrication step in the performance of some procedure. For example, in the automotive vehicle repainting industry it is necessary to apply large quantities of masking tape to a vehicle as a preparation for painting the vehicle. Numerous rolls of masking tape are employed to cover the trim, door handles, bumpers, windshields and headlights of an automotive vehicle to protect those portions of the vehicle from paint which is subsequently sprayed onto the body of the vehicle.
The application of masking tape in the automotive repainting industry is very labor intensive and requires a considerable amount of time. Due to the extensive amount of manual labor which is necessary to apply masking tape to an automotive vehicle prior to painting, the preparatory step of masking represents a substantial portion of the expense of repainting a vehicle.
Masking tape, and numerous other types of tape, are manufactured in rolls which have an annular configuration. Typically, the tape is wound in a spiral about a central annular cardboard or paperboard spool. To manually apply the tape to some structure, such as an automotive vehicle, for example, the user grasps the spool of tape with one hand and anchors the exposed end of the tape with the other hand while pulling the spool away from the anchored end of the tape. As the spool is pulled it turns in rotation, allowing tape to be fed off of the spool and manually positioned as desired.
In the application of masking tape to an automotive vehicle prior to painting the vehicle, it is often difficult to accurately position the tape on the trim or other portion of the vehicle to be covered while the tape is being drawn off of the spool. When the tape is inaccurately positioned, it is necessary for the person applying the tape to stop drawing tape off of the spool and to utilize both hands to adjust the position of the tape which has already been dispensed. To perform such an adjustment, the person applying the tape must tear off the strip of tape which has been dispensed and set the remainder of the roll of tape down so as to free both hands in order to perform the necessary repositioning of the tape that has been dispensed. Since lengths of tape must be repositioned with considerable frequency, the user is constantly setting down and picking up spools of tape.
The repeated laying aside and retrieval of rolls of tape adds considerably to the time required to complete the job of masking an automotive vehicle prior to painting the vehicle. Moreover, in applying masking tape to an automotive vehicle it is frequently necessary for an individual to move about the vehicle in order to effectuate proper adjustment of the position of the tape. Consequently, the user frequently is required to walk several steps in order to retrieve a roll of tape previously set aside. Furthermore, the roll of tape is often misplaced when it is set aside and some time is expended in visually locating the roll of tape in order to retrieve it.
Various tape dispensing systems have been devised to attempt to solve the foregoing problems, but no satisfactory system has yet been achieved. According to one conventional system a fabric strap is employed with a Velcro contact surface at its center and mating Velcro contact surfaces at its opposite ends. The fabric strap is passed through the center opening of the spool of a roll of tape and the ends of the fabric strap are passed through adjacent belt loops in the trousers of the wearer. The end extremities of the fabric strap are folded back over the belt loops and the mating Velcro contact surfaces are secured together so that the roll of tape is carried on the fabric strap between adjacent belt loops on the wearer's trousers.
This prior tape dispensing system does hold the unused portion of the roll of tape close to the body of the individual applying the tape from the roll. However, it involves considerable disadvantages. Since the roll of tape is held against the belt of the user, the user can draw a maximum length of tape from the roll approximately equal to the length of the user's arm. A strip of tape equal to that length must be torn off each time the user draws tape from the roll. This is because the user cannot reach down to pull off more tape with the hand used to draw tape from the roll without fouling the length of tape which has already been extracted from the roll. The time required to repeatedly tear off lengths of tape approximately thirty to thirty six inches in length significantly increases the overall time required to apply the masking tape.